


A Full-Fledged Asekreta Someday

by inkdotism



Category: A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Original Teixcalaanli Character as plot device
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21970012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkdotism/pseuds/inkdotism
Summary: As cadets, Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea started a relationship in class notes, then serial adventure stories, and cemented it in a plot worthy of asekretim.
Relationships: Three Seagrass & Twelve Azalea
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	A Full-Fledged Asekreta Someday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [servantofclio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/gifts).



Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea established their relationship in the first month of Political History 101: From the Start of the Empire to the Present Day, when Twelve Azalea leaned over and asked, “Your name is Three Seagrass, right? Want to trade class notes? I missed a session last week and the week before, but I promise the notes I do have are good.” He rounded his eyes, looking like an uncannily beautiful child asking for a sweet. 

PoliHistory 101, as it was commonly abbreviated among the asekretim, was designed to be an introductory overview for first-year cadets, but given the breadth and complexity of Teixcalaanli history, it was infamous for being challenging. Three Seagrass was ranked third and would normally have disdained anybody offering incomplete notes, but Twelve Azalea was ranked fifth. She would’ve thought it was impossible for anyone to miss a lecture, much less two, and still do so well. Besides, what kind of person was Twelve Azalea, to offer to work together instead of against each other? 

(Information Ministry tended to attract ambitious lone-wolf personalities, herself among them, who viewed friendly overtures in their business as one method of sabotage. But curiosity was another common trait that she shared with the asekretim, and in this case overruled her hesitations.) 

He wasn’t boasting about his notes when they traded access to their digital notes. Hers were a model of clarity, studded with pull quotes and color-coded by the reference texts, but his included original diagrams of interrelated concepts that he studied ahead of their class. His relaxed behavior belied his dedication, and she’d have to watch out in case his class ranking overtook hers. 

“I appreciate the trade!” Twelve Azalea said cheerfully, who had been skimming through her notes while she was sizing him up as a rival. “I’m Twelve Azalea by the way, in case you didn’t know.” (She’d learned everyone’s face, name and average ranking by the second week.) “What do you like to do for fun?”

She tilted her head. “Nothing much. Catching up on infonet posts,” she said, carefully casual with the minimum detail she could get away with. She was not ready to admit that she really planned to spend hours obsessively reading the serial adventure stories that were updated every week. Since she followed both the longtime authors and the amateurs, there were almost too many for one person to follow. And she was definitely not admitting that she wrote and circulated her own pastiches as an anonymous contributor to a group. 

His eyes flashed suddenly, and he said half-eagerly, half-shyly, “Have you heard of the _Windstorms_ community group, by any chance? It’s mostly individual platforms that succeed in gaining mainstream popularity, but I think there are more talented poets writing under a group name.” 

So naturally their relationship evolved into swapping recommendations of new series, notable speculations in the fan communities, and spirited critiques of everything they read. Each was drawn to a specific archetype: Three Seagrass admired the hyper-competent hero, while Twelve Azalea imagined himself as the noble-hearted and independently-minded rogue.

She built a network of friends and contacts at court, focused on expanding her political fluency and influence, and she counted only a few of her fellow first-year cadets in it. Her relationship with Twelve Azalea was all harmless fun, and Three Seagrass didn’t spare a serious thought for him outside of their conversations.

She worried about Five Orbital though, another first-year cadet and one of the few who were not patricians. Three Seagrass gathered that the other cadets suspected Five Orbital of sympathy towards anti-imperial agitators in the City. They must have had no concrete proof though; even as trainees, all officials were expected to report any verified sedition within their ranks for a formal investigation.

Eventually, she brought up her concerns to Twelve Azalea, who said promptly, “You’re right. Five Orbital’s poems have been plagiarized at least six times on the infonets, and she’s the only one who has never shown up at our collective cram sessions. No one willingly misses those, so someone must be excluding her.” 

“Are you doing something about it?” Three Seagrass ventured. Even in conversations limited to adventure stories and class material, Three Seagrass knows Twelve Azalea’s not the type of person to simply watch a situation happen without getting involved.

“Perhaps,” Twelve Azalea said cryptically.

Normally Three Seagrass would have escalated the bullying matter and let someone higher up intervene. But she would be a full-fledged asekreta someday, and part of an asekreta’s job was getting their charges out of unfortunate situations. Guided as she was by all of her favorite characters as role models, now was as good a time as any to start meddling in things herself. 

Her first step was to discover for herself if there was any truth to the suspicions and find out if Five Orbital had any suspicious acquaintances. On their next day off, she donned her blandest of suits and oldest of shoes before shadowing Five Orbital for the next ten hours. By the end of it, her feet hurt and had been nearly bored out of her mind by the grocery shopping, laundry, and other errands she’d dogged Five Orbital through. The most frustrating part, however, was that in the second hour she’d witnessed Twelve Azalea “blunder” into her target and then transparently escort her around.

(Three Seagrass had initially planned on simply outlasting Twelve Azalea, but when he showed no signs of parting from Five Orbital after eight hours, she conceded defeat and went home in a snarled mood.)

If her observational subject had been unaccompanied all day, Three Seagrass would’ve concluded that she was a normal law-abiding citizen and considered the peace of mind worth the effort. But Twelve Azalea’s presence threw it all off. Was her innocent behavior genuine, or was Twelve Azalea’s overt presence affecting her behavior? An even worse possibility: what if Twelve Azalea and Five Orbital were both traitors, and Twelve Azalea was warning her of Three Seagrass’s scrutiny?

There were so many ways to interpret Five Orbital, and not enough information to support one over another. She’d have to trust that he was on Three Seagrass’s side and work with him rather than against him. 

With a prayer to the stars that this approach would work, she sat next to Twelve Azalea in PoliHistory 101 and said bluntly, “I followed you and Five Orbital yesterday.”

His head snapped in her direction. “You _stalked_ us? Everywhere we went?” Twelve Azalea said, visibly delighted at the idea. 

“Followed,” she repeated uncomfortable with his amusement. At least he wasn’t alarmed. “And only for ten hours.” She forgot her embarrassment in a wave of irritation at her own failure.

“Semantics,” he said, waving the word away. “Why didn’t you tell me your plan earlier? I would’ve loved to stalk someone! It’s just like Chapter 27 of _Six Windstorms in Motion_!”

“I don’t believe that you have any clothes subtle enough for spying. You and your outfits are as eye-catchingly pretty as your name. Don’t preen, you flower, it’s not a compliment!”

“Of course I’m taking it as a compliment. I’m so flattered you think me a five-petalled wonder - “

“- I did not say that - “

“- but I concede I’m not as talented as you are in fieldwork, Three Seagrass. _A reed bending to its purpose, single-minded without breaking_ ,” he quoted with wide-eyed beaming. She closed her mouth and looked back at him with an equally warm expression.

She broke the moment, wanting to continue with the discussion. “I followed her that day because I wanted proof of her innocence, for my own peace of mind.”

Twelve Azalea said blithely, “Oh, I see. I am already convinced of her blamelessness, so I didn’t bother with subterfuge. It’s not my specialty, as we’ve agreed.” He looked somehow very unconcerned about his self-admitted weakness. “My plan was to gain her trust and help smooth over relationships with everyone else. Once they warm up to her, they’ll stop bullying her. As a bonus, this way we don’t have to worry about her political beliefs! She might truly be an activist, and it wouldn’t even matter because nobody would care-” 

“Of course it matters!”

They both froze. After a moment, she said slowly with very controlled eyes - he was so likable that she forgot herself - “Of course it matters. We’re Information Ministry. We look after the good of our society. We’d have to expose her if she’s working with the enemy. Even if she becomes a friend.”

His gaze dropped. “Yes. Well. This plan should work, regardless of what Five Orbital thinks. Shall we move forward with it?”

She thought Twelve Azalea’s plan was extremely vague and that exchange extremely alarming, but at the moment she had no better ideas. About anything. So she agreed: both of them would intercept Five Orbital tomorrow afternoon and contrive to accompany her wherever she went for the rest of the week. 

Despite her wariness about Twelve Azalea, nothing else over the next three days raised a red flag. She went out for meals with them, powered through study sessions with them, and enjoyed both the company and the underlying thrill of a plot in action. Her suspicions gradually slipped out of her memory. 

On the fourth day, she groggily woke up at noon to every news channel chattering about an overnight outbreak of radical graffiti in every central plaza. On that scale, the operation must have required every member - and according to plan, Three Seagrass knew where Five Orbital was for most of that night. 

“Studying in the library all night, and then ice cream at the break of dawn,” Three Seagrass said with a straight face to Twelve Azalea when the two of them met later that day. Twelve Azalea raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“You’re bluffing. I think you two went out clubbing because you wouldn’t have glitter stuck under your fingernails from the library or ice cream. I wouldn’t be very good at my future job if I didn’t notice the glitter. So, whose idea was it? Inquiring minds want to know.”

“Not important, Twelve Azalea! What is important is that I can vouch for Five Orbital’s alibi. Once the fact is circulating on the infonet, the cadets have no reason to continue treating her like an enemy. It’s even better than the endgame of your plan because we have real proof and we’re not just relying on generating sentiment.”

Three Seagrass nudged Twelve Azalea with her shoulder. “But we wouldn’t have this alibi without your plan of ‘follow her everywhere every day’ so you deserve congratulations, Twelve Azalea. Everything worked out.” She tipped her head back in thought, squinting at the sun in her eyes, and continued, “But hypothetically, what if this hadn’t happened so quickly? How long would we have needed to shadow her, and how would we have executed the next phase of the plan? You may wield boundless charm like magic, but I wouldn’t know where to begin with integrating Five Orbital into the social fold.”

He said quickly, “It’s a good thing we didn’t need to.” He avoided her gaze. It wasn’t like him to avoid indulging his imagination in wild speculation.

Without bidding, her previous suspicion about his loyalties flared up. She liked him so much and didn’t want to pry any more, but she needed to. ‘ _Of course it matters!_ ’ she’d retorted then and told herself now. It was her duty to find out the truth. 

“Did you know the vandalism was going to happen?” Like a masochist prodding a wound, fascinated by the discovery of a new level of pain: “Did you participate in it last night?”

Three Seagrass knew she and Five Orbital were nowhere near any of the taggings last night. She had absolutely no idea where Twelve Azalea was last night.

“No!” he said, horrified, meeting her eyes at last. “I didn’t know where or what would happen, and I swear on my blood that I had nothing to do with last night.”

Her relief was short-lived, because then he added, reluctantly, “But I knew something big was going to happen this week. I have...friends. They told me that Five Orbital isn’t involved with them, so I couldn’t let people keep ostracizing her on an idiotic notion that she’s suspicious just for being poor. I thought that if I kept following her around this week that she’d have an alibi, I could prove her innocence, and all of this unpleasantness would stop for her.”

She hoped (like there was anything to hope for after these revelations) her face was sticking to the default inscrutability all of the trainees had been taught in class. Twelve Azalea kept staring at her, so she was afraid it wasn’t. But maybe it was, because he said, helplessly, “Will you say something?” To me or to the Information Ministry, his expression implied.

Frankly, Three Seagrass didn’t know herself what she planned to do. Would she reassure him, say she was going to keep his confidences? Or would she report him to their teacher, and silently watch his future never bloom, his family gracefully blocked from power? Duty and honor said she ought to report him for this confirmation of connections to unsavory elements, but he wasn’t a threat himself to the Emperor, or at least he’d said so, and he was too goofy and gallant to betray like that even though really he’d betrayed her trust first-

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she said, and spun on her heel, and quick-marched home so she could throw herself into bed and properly scream into her pillow over this entire dilemma.

She didn’t talk to him tomorrow. In fact, Three Seagrass skipped the next two lectures for PoliHistory 101, claiming a high fever. She couldn’t talk to anyone about this, so she hid from everyone and struggled with her conflicting thoughts. 

Before the third lecture, she barrelled into class, ignoring shouts of welcome back, intent on Twelve Azalea studying at his desk. She slapped down two tickets to the _Windstorms_ convention scheduled for next month, and said blandly, “Did you get tickets yet, Petal?” They’d only gone on sale an hour ago. 

He looked down at the tickets, then up at her still looming over him. She was aware that shadows still lingered under her eyes from lost sleep. 

“You know that cloudhook authentication would work just as well for entry? Physical tickets aren’t necessary.” 

She shrugged, shoulders tight. “Many things aren’t strictly necessary. And yet, I have tickets for us anyways. Answer my question, Petal. Do you want to go?”

“...Yeah. Let’s go, Reed.”

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to the awesome prompt, semi-inspired by this bit from the book (which I semi-quoted): "Yes,” said Three Seagrass. “That’s what [asekretim are] for. And information extraction, and getting our charges out of unfortunate or incriminating situations. Which this is becoming. Are we done here, Petal? Did you get what you wanted?”


End file.
